Progressive News Daily

By Mike Lillis
The Washington Independent

As Capitol Hill Democrats consider proposals to pull the country out of its huge deficit hole, they’re repeatedly running into a formidable impediment: themselves.

On issues as diverse as health care and student lending, provisions designed to rein in deficit spending have all run smack into the ubiquitous inclination of lawmakers to protect their home turf from the scalpel of budget cuts. Their message is familiar: Congress must do something to get its fiscal house in order, just don’t do it in my back yard. And party affiliation is largely irrelevant.

The most recent case surrounds a popular proposal to eliminate government subsidies to private companies that lend to students. The legislation, which has already passed the House and enjoys enthusiastic support from President Obama, would save the government tens of billions of dollars over the next decade — most of which would go toward expanding scholarships for low-income college students. Never an overly partisan issue, it was proposed by President Bush several times during his tenure. Senate Democrats are hoping to attach the legislation to their sweeping health care reform proposal.

Not so fast. (more)

AFP

NEW YORK (AFP) – An alleged Al-Qaeda agent and US citizen involved in a bloody shooting in Yemen five days ago was revealed Friday to have worked for a US nuclear power plant company between 2002 and 2008.

Sharif Mobley, said by a source close to the police in Yemen to hold both US and Yemeni citizenship, was employed by PSEG Nuclear in New Jersey as a laborer, company spokesman Joseph Delmar said.

Mobley, whose name in Yemen is spelled Mobayli, worked “mainly during refueling outages for several weeks at a time” when he was employed by PSEG, the company said in a statement.

“While working here, he did routine labor work carrying supplies and assisting maintenance activities. He also worked at other nuclear plants in the region.” (more)

AFP

NEW YORK (AFP) – More than 10,000 people who worked in the toxic chaos of New York’s Ground Zero after 9/11 could receive compensation totaling 657 million dollars for health problems under a deal reached Thursday.

Thousands of plaintiffs, mostly firefighters, police and construction workers, have sued the city for what they say are health problems connected to work in the debris of the World Trade Center, which was destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

On Thursday, the head of an insurance company that was funded with federal dollars to insure New York City against claims by many of the plaintiffs related said a potential deal to pay out up to 657 million dollars  had been reached.

“We have reached a settlement that is fair under difficult and complicated circumstances,” said Christine LaSala, president of WTC Captive Insurance company, which holds one billion dollars in federal funds set aside for health related claims stemming from the clean-up, recovery and restoration efforts. (more)

by Blue Texan
FiredogLake.com

My sense has always been that the Teabagger crowd is more glibertarian than fundie, but these comments from the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins–one of the most important right-wing Christian leaders in the Bush/Rove coalition–betray a real hostility brewing.

There’s no centralized tea party organization, and anecdotes suggest that many tea party participants hold socially conservative views. But those views have been little in evidence at movement gatherings or in public statements, and are sometimes deliberately excluded from the political agenda. The groups coordinating them eschew social issues, and a new Contract From America, has become an article of concern on the social right.

The contract, sponsored by the grass-roots Tea Party Patriots as well as Washington groups such as FreedomWorks and Americans for Tax Reform, asks supporters to choose the 10 most important issues from a menu of 21 choices that makes no mention of socially conservative priorities such as gay marriage and abortion.

(more)

by Jim Swanson
Progressive News Daily

(click image for full size)

You may have noticed that there was a lack of content both yesterday and early today.

The reason was a rare chance for me to see an incredibly talented Blues/Rock guitarist named Joe Bonamassa in Sacramento, California last night.

Being from Chicago, I am an avid Blues fan and Joe is one of the premier guitarists of our generation, or perhaps ANY generation.

He quickly sold out the Crest Theater for this show, and I was fortunate enough to wrangle 4th row tickets. I also had the chance to chat with Joe for a while before the show started.

It was a late night for me which actually started at 3:00pm with the drive to California’s Capital City.

As expected, Joe blew the roof off the place and received 4 standing ovations.

Thought I will never reach anywhere near his level of talent, I play guitar as well and own several of them myself.

Above is a photo of Joe (at left) and me, shortly after Joe was kind enough to autograph a pickguard from my Fender Stratocaster. Joe’s website is HERE. Please check it out and see what I mean about his incredible talent.

Thanks,

Jim

BBC Online

Twin suicide bomb attacks on the Pakistani city of Lahore have killed 45 people and injured around 100.

Bombers targeted military vehicles as they passed through a crowded area and at least nine soldiers are among the dead, officials say.

Several more explosions were heard in the city later on Friday, but there were no reports of serious injuries.

The attacks follow threats by Taliban militants to send out thousands of suicide bombers.

The earlier explosions took place near the RA Bazaar, in a busy residential and shopping area where army and security agencies have facilities. (more)

by Jon Walker
Common Dreams.org

Reconciliation Rules Might Require Student Loan Reform

The good news is that Democrats might have to include some form of student loan reform in the reconciliation bill to meet the cost-saving requirements of their reconciliation instructions. From Politico:

The Senate parliamentarian notified Democratic leaders that, in order to meet the reconciliation requirements, both the Senate health and finance committees would need to produce $1 billion in deficit savings each over the next 10 years, Conrad said.

With health care alone, the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee would not be able to show the items within its jurisdiction save at least $1 billion. By inserting the education package, the committee would satisfy the reconciliation instructions, Conrad said.

If this is the case, it is great news because it means student loan reform will be dealt with this year. That means billions to help students and struggling community colleges hurting because of the economic downturn. Of course, the question remains as to what kind of student loan reform it will be. Will it be like the student-friendly reform that already passed the House, or will it be some baloney Sallie Mae/JPMorgan Chase-created “compromise” that would allow them to continue ripping off billions from American taxpayers? (more)

YAHOO! Finance

It is the Wall Street equivalent of a coroner’s report — a 2,200-page document that lays out, in new and startling detail, how Lehman Brothers used accounting sleight of hand to conceal the bad investments that led to its undoing.

The report, compiled by an examiner for the bank, now bankrupt, hit Wall Street with a thud late Thursday. The 158-year-old company, it concluded, died from multiple causes. Among them were bad mortgage holdings and, less directly, demands by rivals like JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, that the foundering bank post collateral against loans it desperately needed.

But the examiner, Anton R. Valukas, also for the first time, laid out what the report characterized as “materially misleading” accounting gimmicks that Lehman used to mask the perilous state of its finances, Michael J. de la Merced and Andrew Ross Sorkin report in The New York Times. The bank’s bankruptcy, the largest in American history, shook the financial world. Fears that other banks might topple in a cascade of failures eventually led Washington to arrange a sweeping rescue for the nation’s financial system. (more)

by Chris Lefkow
AFP

NEW YORK (AFP) – With The New York Times and Rupert Murdoch poised to start charging for newspapers online, media heavyweights sparred on Thursday over whether readers will pay for news on the Web.

The Times plans to require payment for full access to NYTimes.com in early 2011 and Murdoch, who already charges for The Wall Street Journal online, has pledged to begin charging Web readers of his other News Corp. newspapers.

Keynote speakers and panelists at the Bloomberg BusinessWeek Media Summit here differed sharply on whether Internet users would be ready to shell out money for what they have become accustomed to getting for free.

New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger said the time is right for his newspaper to start charging for its website and the move will provide a “critical” new revenue stream to add to print and online advertising revenue. (more)

by Jim Swanson
Progressive News Daily
from an email from The Courage Campaign

John A. Perez has made a remarkable journey to become the first openly gay Speaker of the California Assembly. Now he wants to talk with you.

I first met John in early 2003 when I was working on Howard Dean’s presidential campaign in California. John showed me just who he was then by taking the time to explain the political landscape to someone just getting started in state politics.

That’s our Speaker. He never forgets where he came from. His father came to California nearly 60 years ago with barely a sixth-grade education. But he worked hard as a cook and sheet metal worker to help his family and give John a good education. John held fast to the values his father and mother taught him as a leader in the labor movement and then as an elected official.

Last week, I sat in the gallery to witness history as John took the oath as the 68th Speaker of the California Assembly. He’s not only the first openly gay Speaker of the Assembly, but the first openly gay person to lead a state legislature anywhere in the country.

Speaker Perez is already playing a leading role in shaping California’s future, from the chronic budget crisis to fixing our schools to the battle for full equality for all Californians..

That’s why we’ve invited Speaker Perez to talk exclusively with you on a special “Courage Campaign Conversation” statewide conference call this Monday, March 15, at 5 p.m. PT. We have a limited number of lines available, so please  RSVP for the call and consider submitting a question online. Click the photo on the right to register for the call.

2010 is a turning point for California and John A. Perez could be the person who helps turn our state around.

by Zaid Jilani

Think Progress

Yesterday, the House of Representatives debated H. Con Res. 248, a privileged resolution brought to the floor by Reps. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Walter Jones (R-NC), and others that required Congress to debate whether or not to continue the war in Afghanistan. (The vote trashed the resolution 65-356. Vote roll call is HERE.)

During one point in the debate, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) delivered an impassioned speech against escalating in Afghanistan and condemned the media for its wall-to-wall coverage of the scandal surrounding former Rep. Eric Massa while ignoring the Afghanistan debate in Congress:

KENNEDY: What is shameful is our policy that puts them in harm’s way when they don’t need to be … Finally, if anyone wants to know where citizens are, there’s two pres people in this gallery. We’re talking about Eric Massa 24-7 on the TV, we’re talking about war and peace, $3 billion, 1,000 lives and no press, you want to know why the American public is fit? They’re fit because they’re not seeing their Congress do the work they’re sent to do. It’s because the press, the press of the United States is not covering the most significant issue of national importance and that’s the laying of lives down in the nation for the service of our country. It’s despicable, the national press corps right now!

(more)

(Official Progressive News Daily Sanctioned “HERO SPEECH”)

BY Richard Sisk
The New York Daily News

WASHINGTON – They were our New York “Fly Girls” of World War II, a special band of sisters who were the first women to pilot military aircraft to help save the country.

“Finally,” Katherine Kornblum, 92, of White Plains, said with a huge grin as the nation got around to thanking the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) yesterday with the Congressional Gold Medal.

At a rousing Capitol Hill ceremony, Lt. Col. Nicole Malachowski, the first woman to fly with the famed Air Force Thunderbirds aerobatic team, said the WASPs are an inspiration to women currently in the ranks. “They let nothing and no one get in their way,” Malachowski said.

The 1,074 WASPs were never granted military rank, never flew in combat and were denied veterans benefits until 1977. (more)

By MARIE BÉNILDE
CounterPunch

Journalists are now in the same situation as steel workers in the1970s: they are destined to disappear, but they don’t know it. That was the assessment of a banker from BNP-Paribas at the French national press federation’s conference in Strasbourg in 2006. His words caused a sensation, but the statistics support him: having lost more than 2,300 jobs last year, the French press is going through a similar crisis to the United States, where more than 24,500 jobs were axed in 2009. Only 300,000 now work in newspapers in the US, compared to 415,000 a decade ago (according to Figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, quoted by Market Watch. The Washington Post has closed its regional bureaus, and the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune have filed for bankruptcy protection. Every national daily in France, apart from the sports daily, L’Equipe, has lost money.

The decline is not surprising. According to the management consultancy Bain and Company, the internet increased its share of global profits from the creative industries from 4 per cent to 22 per cent in the last 10 years, at the expense of the press, which saw its profits fall from 40 per cent to 14 per cent. The transfer of advertising from newspapers to the net is often blamed, but the public has also become disillusioned with the content supplied by a journalistic elite that has lost credibility: newspapers are seen as politically biased, following the crowd, and uninterested in the needs of their readers. (more)

AP

GENEVA – British bank HSBC says information on 15,000 customers with accounts in Switzerland has been stolen.

HSBC says a former employee stole the information in late 2006 and early 2007. The accounts were all opened before October 2006.

The bank says it has contacted the affected customers and apologized for the breach of their privacy.

It said Thursday the stolen information only affects accounts in Switzerland with the exception of its former subsidiary HSBC Guyerzeller Bank. (more)

RELATED:
HSBC profits rise, boss gives bonus to charity (video)

by Lehaz Ali
AFP

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) – Militants armed with guns and grenades stormed the offices of a US-based Christian charity in Pakistan on Wednesday, killing six aid workers in an attack blamed on Islamist rebels.

The gunmen stormed the World Vision building near the town of Oghi in the Mansehra district of North West Frontier Province (NWFP), where Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants have waged a deadly campaign.

The aid group condemned the attack as “brutal and senseless”, and indefinitely suspended all of World Vision?s operations in Pakistan, where it has about 300 staff.

World Vision said six Pakistani employees, including two women, were killed and seven others wounded when up to 15 gunmen arrived in pick-up vehicles and began firing on the aid workers. (more)

by Jeanna Bryner
Live Science.com

Experiences help to shape life, so it’s reasonable to think someone who grew up when John F. Kennedy was shot might have a different worldview than a person who witnessed Enron collapse and has been “wired” since just a tot.

New survey research announced today suggests indeed that is the case: Large generational gaps exist, particularly when it comes to work attitudes. The findings reveal young people just entering the workforce, often called GenMe or Millennials, are more likely than their elders to value leisure time over work and to place a premium on rewards such as higher salaries and status.

“Our results show that the desire for leisure and a better work-life balance starts long before young workers have families, so companies will have to consider new policies for younger people who want leisure time to travel or spend with friends,” said Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. “Of course, the generation itself may have to adapt their expectations if they want both higher salaries and more time off.” (more)

by Grace Huang
truthout.org

As part of the White House’s final push on health care reform, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Monday called for health insurance executives to publicly explain why they are raising premiums.

“It’s time for these insurance company CEOs to do their part to make the system more transparent for the American people,” she said in a formal letter. “If insurance companies are going to raise rates, the least they can do is tell us why.”

This follows up on a meeting last week with CEOs from five major health insurance companies, where Sebelius said all parties involved agreed that more transparency would benefit everyone. She in turn asked them to post their proposed rate increases and the actuarial data supporting them online.

In a letter to UnitedHealth Group Inc., WellPoint Inc., Aetna Inc., Health Care Service Corporation and CIGNA HealthCare Inc. Sebelius asked the insurers to disclose information such as cost increase estimates, explanations for their necessity, the number of people who will receive such increases and an explanation of measures the companies are taking to improve the affordability of health care. (more)

By Randy Lewis
The Los Angeles Times

Ask any musician what’s wrong with video games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band and you’ll get some variation of this response: If gamers spent half as much time with a real instrument as they did pushing plastic buttons on a toy version, they could become musicians instead of just mimicking them.

That argument has been heard loud and clear at Seven45 Studios in Boston, where game designers have come up with Power Gig: Rise of the SixString, which puts a genuine electric guitar into players’ hands, allowing them to unplug from the game, hook up to an amplifier and rock for real.

At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Seven45 officials on Tuesday demonstrated their version, which they boast has “the most sophisticated game controller ever invented.” Power Gig is expected to hit the market this fall despite the sputtering sales of music-centric games. (more)

By Tom Hayden
The Nation

It’s been a long winter for the peace movement. Waiting for Obama has proved fruitless. The Great Recession has strengthened Wall Street and diverted attention from the wars. The debate over healthcare still won’t go away and has demoralized progressive advocates. Given a chance to exit from Afghanistan when the Karzai election proved to be stolen, President Obama escalated anyway, but also promised to “begin” exiting almost before an opposition could mobilize at home.

Representative Dennis Kucinich will step into the crosswinds this week and force the House of Representatives to wake up, pay attention, and vote up or down on the Afghanistan war. The Kucinich initiative at least will reveal where Congress stands. Whether it will energize the peace movement for upcoming March protests or beyond is unpredictable.

Kucinich, interviewed along with other members of Congress by The Nation last week, is introducing a so-called privileged resolution requiring the House to hold a three-hour debate this coming Wednesday, followed by a vote on the Afghanistan war. The vote is expected to authorize the war, but passage of Kucinich’s initiative would require a withdrawal in thirty days. If the president rejected such a decision, the withdrawal would be delayed until the end of 2010, nine months from now.

“It’s time to force a debate,” Kucinich says. “It’s not enough to slow-walk the end of the war.” On Friday Kucinich had seventeen co-sponsors for his measure. (more)

by Sam Stein
The Huffington Post

The White House fired back at Justice John Roberts Tuesday night, after the Supreme Court Chief told a crowd that he found it “very troubling” that President Barack Obama would criticize the court during his State of the Union address.

In a statement sent to reporters, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that the only troubling thing was the 5-4 ruling by the court, which said that corporations could spend unlimited amounts of money advocating on behalf of candidates in elections. Roberts leads the court.

“What is troubling is that this decision opened the floodgates for corporations and special interests to pour money into elections – drowning out the voices of average Americans,” Gibbs said. “The President has long been committed to reducing the undue influence of special interests and their lobbyists over government. That is why he spoke out to condemn the decision and is working with Congress on a legislative response.” (more)

By Judy Keen
USA TODAY

Karl Rove, the architect of George W. Bush’s presidency, says the “Teabagger” movement could have lasting influence in the nation’s politics if it remains decentralized but could hurt Republicans if it backs third-party candidates who siphon votes from GOP candidates. “There’s a danger from them, particularly if they’re used by political operators … to try and hijack” elections, he says.

Rove says Teabagger activists, who want to limit taxes and government’s reach, could expand their clout if they emulate the 1960s civil rights movement, the gun rights movement and abortion opponents. Those groups grew “from the bottom up” and found “a raggedly unified voice,” he said in an interview with USA TODAY about his memoirs Courage and Consequence: My Life As a Conservative in the Fight, out Tuesday.

Rove, 59, calls President Obama “undisciplined, unengaged, aloof and focused on the wrong things” and suggests that if Obama’s health care overhaul fails, he will revert to a more limited agenda.

Rove, a Fox News commentator and Wall Street Journal columnist, said the gulf between Obama and Republicans in Congress is a “shocking failure.” (more)

By Nick Baumann
Mother Jones

Government investigators can’t find the Bush lawyer’s emails. His explanation makes about as much sense as his legal rationale for torture.

The Justice Department report released last month on the crafting of the so-called torture memos contained a number of eyebrow-raising revelations—but none perhaps as intriguing as the disclosure that many of John Yoo’s emails had been irretrievably destroyed. Given that the former Justice Department political appointee played a key role in composing the legal rationale for the Bush administration’s use of brutal interrogation tactics, this seemed suspicious, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and others have pressed the agency to investigate. But Yoo has brushed aside concerns about his emails, and he has criticized those raising questions about the lost messages—including Leahy and Justice Department investigators—for their weak grasp on the “basics of intelligence.” Yoo’s own explanation for the missing emails, though, doesn’t add up, and experts on government archiving and recordkeeping practices say his comments are misleading, if not “nonsensical.”

Following a years-long investigation, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility, sharply rebuked Yoo and former assistant attorney general Jay Bybee for cooking up flawed legal opinions justifying the Bush administration’s enhanced interrogation program. OPR revealed that during its review “it became apparent…that relevant documents were missing.” (more)

By NEAL E. BOUDETTE And SHARON TERLEP
The Wall Street Journal

Toyota Motor Corp. and federal investigators probed the latest report of sudden acceleration Tuesday, a dramatic incident on a California highway that ricocheted around the Internet.

A California man called 911 for help on Monday and said his blue 2008 Toyota Prius sped up to more than 90 miles per hour on Interstate 8 near San Diego before a California Highway Patrolman helped him slow the car and bring it to a stop.

On Tuesday, reports of the incident, including interviews with the 61-year-old driver, James Sikes, recalling his ride, appeared on television shows and were prominently featured on Web sites including YouTube.com and Yahoo.

The reported incident occurred only hours after Toyota completed a presentation intended to demonstrate that the electronics in its cars couldn’t be the cause of unwanted acceleration. The auto maker had hoped to presentation would kick off a week of aggressive rebuttals to critics. (more)

RELATED:
Police Rescue Man From Runaway Prius (video)
Timeline of major U.S. auto recalls (Interactive)

AP

NORWALK, Calif. – A terrified 7-year-old boy begged emergency dispatchers to send police to his Southern California home where three armed robbers threatened his parents, according to a recording of the call released Tuesday.

Gunmen broke into the boy’s home Tuesday morning and announced that they would take whatever they wanted, Los Angeles County sheriff’s Lt. Steve Kenny said.

The boy and his 6-year-old sister hid unnoticed in the locked bathroom while the suspects threatened his mother and father at gunpoint.

“There’s some guy who’s going to kill my mom and dad,” he said breathlessly. “Bring cops. A lot of them! … And soldiers, too.” (more)

By Alex Seitz-Wald
Think Progress.org

Hate radio host Rush Limbaugh has been one of health care reform’s most vociferous opponents, warning that “[h]uman beings will die earlier than normal” under the “freedom killing” and “life threatening” plan, and calling for it to be “aborted.” Yesterday, Limbaugh put his money where his mouth is, saying that if health care passes and all his fears are realized, he’ll leave the country:

CALLER: If the health care bill passes, where would you go for health care yourself? And the second part of that is, what would happen to the doctors, do they have to participate in the federal program, or could they opt out of it? [...]

LIMBAUGH: My guess in even in Canada and even in the UK, doctors have opted out. And once they’ve opted, they can’t see anybody Medicare, Medicaid, or what will become the exchanges. They have to have a clientele of private patients that will pay them a retainer and it’ll be a very small practice. I don’t know if that’s been outlawed in the Senate bill. I don’t know. I’ll just tell you this, if this passes and it’s five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented — I am leaving the country. I’ll go to Costa Rica.

(more with sound)

**PS: Rush, don’t forget to take your “Viagra” so you can play with your little boy friends in Costa Rica, you freak! – JS

By Ruth Conniff
The Progressive

Monday night on the Ed Schultz Show former CIGNA V.P. and insurance-industry whistle blower Wendell Potter came out strongly for pulling together behind the imperfect health insurance reform legislation the President is trying to push through Congress.

Potter’s take is significant, because he understands the details of health insurance policy, and the kinds of loopholes industry lobbyists manage to write into law.

As the President goes on his barnstorming tour to rally support for health care reform, I had been wondering about Potter’s take on the current plan. Is it worth it, or is it, as Dennis Kucinich calls it, “a giveaway to the insurance industry”?

Back in September, I interviewed Potter when he came to Madison. He expressed worry that the health reform plan Obama was backing was turning out to be far less than it should be. “If he reverses himself on both the public option and the mandate requiring people to buy insurance, that will just be a gift to industry,” he said. (more)

By Richard A. Serrano
The Los Angeles Times

Using e-mail, YouTube videos, phony travel documents and a burning desire to kill “or die trying,” a middle-aged American woman from Pennsylvania helped recruit a network for suicide attacks and other terrorist strikes in Europe and Asia, according to a federal grand jury indictment unsealed Tuesday.

Colleen R. LaRose, who dubbed herself “Jihad Jane,” was so intent on waging jihad, authorities said, that she traveled to Sweden to kill an artist in a way that would frighten “the whole Kufar [nonbeliever] world.”

With blond hair and green eyes, the 46-year-old woman bragged that she could go anywhere undetected, allegedly boasting in one e-mail that it was “an honor & great pleasure to die or kill for” jihad.

“Only death will stop me here that I am so close to the target!” she boasted. (more)

BBC Online

US Vice-President Joe Biden has condemned Israel’s approval of 1,600 new homes for ultra-Orthodox Jews in East Jerusalem.

Mr Biden, in Israel as part of US attempts to kick-start the peace process, said it was “the kind of step that undermines the trust we need”.

Palestinian leaders also condemned the controversial move.

Israel insisted it was a procedural step with no connection to Mr Biden’s visit.

The international community considers East Jerusalem occupied territory. Building on occupied land is illegal under international law, but Israel regards East Jerusalem – which it annexed in 1967 – as its territory. (more)

By Alex Seitz-Wald
Think Progress.org

The Census is a popular topic of right-wing conspiracy theories and Fox News host Glenn Beck spent a good portion of radio show today fear-mongering about it. Going through the form, he determined that the government doesn’t have the right to ask any of the questions — except for the first one asking how many people live in your home.

He took particular issue with a question asking for the respondent’s race. But after Beck’s co-host pointed out that the question has been part of the Census since the Founding Fathers’ time, Beck twisted the three-fifths law to claim that the Census is now breeding slavery:

BECK: Why were they asking the race question, you said when, in 1790? … Right, they want to know, do you count as three-fifths? Do you count at all? So, you have to know how many slaves did you have? People find that offensive today because the idea was, if we’re going to count, we want to know how many are here for services etc. etc. and slaves would get less. Well that’s not right. One. One. ‘I’m not three-fifths, I’m one. Whites are not worth than me.’ Now reverse it, why are they asking this question today?

CO-HOST: Because minorities are worth more than whites.

(more)

by Zachary Roth
TPM Muckraker

(click photo for larger size)

A coalition of Teabagger groups will gather in a Chinese restaurant on Capitol Hill tonight to announce plans for one final Washington showdown over health-care reform.

The event, dubbed “Take the Town Halls to Washington,” is designed to bring Teabagger activists to Capitol Hill during the month of March, in order to target 50 House Democrats who have not yet announced their vote on health-care reform, according to a press release. It’s being put together by Mark Skoda, a prime organizer of last month’s controversial National Teabagger Convention, where Sarah Palin was the keynote speaker, and by Michael Patrick Leahy, a Teabagger leader and GOP consultant.

Asked how many Teabaggers he expected to show up, Leahy told TPMmuckraker:

“I am very confident that the number of activists is going to increase dramatically each day as we approach the White House deadline of March 18 for the vote.”

(more)